الفی: دلیل‌آوری درباره ی تفکر (دوره اول ابتدایی)

الفی دانش‌آموز کلاس اول دبستان است و آن‌قدر خجالتی است که در کلاس حرف نمی‌زند و حتی سؤال هم نمی‌‌کند. با این حال، از چیزی هم فرار نمی‌کند و هر اتفاقی که در کلاس یا خانه می‌افتد برای ذهنش گیج‌کننده است.
وقتی مدیر مدرسه برگزاری مسابقه‌ای را با هدف بهبود استدلال پیشنهاد می‌کند، کل کلاس الفی درگیر این می‌شود که دریابند جملات چگونه کار می‌کنند و تمایزها و پیوندها چگونه انجام می‌شوند. در همین زمان، الفی و هم‌کلاسی‌هایش تمایزات اساسی فراوانی برای کندوکاو کشف می‌کنند: ظاهر و واقعیت، یکی و بسیار، جزء و کل، شباهت و تفاوت، دوام و تغییر.

Elfie is in the first grade and is so shy she can’t speak in class and can hardly even formulate a question. Yet little escapes her and her mind puzzles over everything that happens in class and at home. When the principal proposes a contest aimed at improving reasoning, her whole class is caught up in figuring out how sentences work and how distinctions and connections are made. At the same time, Elfie and her classmates discover many distinctions fundamental to inquiry: appearance and reality, the one and the many, parts and wholes, similarity and difference, permanence and change. Ethical concepts in this novel include friendship  love, self-esteem, respect for others, teasing, choosing, and parent-child relationships.  The type is large and readable, with some blank pages for young readers to try their hand at book illustration.

Elfie is an early childhood curriculum designed to introduce young children to the notion of inquiry-based learning. Elfie helps children to recognize and explore the complexity of their experience and to question the seemingly unproblematic aspects of the world and the language they use to talk about it. This book focuses on distinctions which are used in successful thought and behavior (for instance, the difference between appearance and reality, parts and wholes, permanence and change, change and growth). And it provides students with many opportunities to organize their experience into story form: an important prerequisite for learning to write. Elfie also assists teachers in promoting classroom dialogue. Teacher Manual to accompany this novel is Getting Our Thoughts Together.